He did do a part-time communications degree eventually. God knows why he did that. But that degree was enough to get him this job teaching business communication skills and it suited him. He had no special interest in the subject itself, but he enjoyed teaching. It was fine. A steady job with good hours. He actually thought he might do it forever.
‘Do you enjoy your chosen profession?’ asked Savannah. Was she laughing at him? Also, was she deliberately avoiding answering his question about how she knew his parents or had she just got distracted? He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of asking again.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Anyway. Better get on with it.’
‘Do you want some help?’ She slammed the mug down on the porcelain tiles next to her and he winced because the mug was his mother’s favourite, the one that said, There’s no place like home: except Grandma’s!
‘Careful with that mug,’ he said. ‘It’s my mother’s favourite.’
Savannah picked up the mug with exaggerated care, got to her feet and placed it on the table where Logan’s father sat to do the crossword on Saturday mornings.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just grabbed it from the dishwasher.’ She picked it up again and studied it. ‘No place like Grandma’s. Except your mother isn’t a grandma, is she?’
‘It belonged to my grandmother,’ said Logan. Troy had bought it for their mother’s mother as a Christmas gift, and she’d loved it. Of course she had. Troy was famous for buying the best gifts. Her love of the mug had been inexplicable because their mother’s mother had never been especially grandmotherly. Whenever they visited she was always keen for a departure time to be specified upfront.
The girl stepped off the veranda onto the grass and walked over to him. She stood a little too close, and Logan took a step back. Amy called people who did that ‘Space Invaders’。 The Delaneys were not touchy-feely people. Except for their mother. She was a hugger, an arm-patter, a back-rubber, but Joy had always been the exception to the Delaney rule.
Savannah looked up at him with too much interest. Her eyelashes were long and white, like a small native animal’s. She had a pointed, freckled nose, thin, chapped lips and a flesh-coloured Band-Aid above one eyebrow. Logan was taller and bigger than most people, but this girl was so small and fragile-looking she made him feel enormous and foolish, as though he were dressed up as a football mascot.
‘Do you want to have children?’ She looked at him intensely. Was there something a little wrong with her?
‘Maybe one day,’ he said. He took another step back. ‘What happened there?’ He indicated the Band-Aid.
‘My boyfriend hit me,’ she said, without inflection.
He thought her answer was going to be something mundane – in fact, he had no interest in the answer, he was just deflecting attention – and consequently, in his shock, he responded without thinking.
‘Why?’ The word was out of his mouth before he could drag it back. Why? It was like asking, What did you do to deserve that? His sisters would tear strips off him. Victim-blaming! ‘Sorry. That’s a stupid thing to ask.’
‘It’s okay. So, he came home from work, when was it? Last Tuesday night.’ She stuck her hands in the pockets of Amy’s jeans and circled the toe of her boot in the grass. ‘He was actually in a pretty good mood that day.’
‘You don’t need to tell me,’ said Logan. He held up a hand to try to stop her. He didn’t want details, for Christ’s sake.
‘It’s okay, I’m quite happy to tell you,’ she said, and he’d asked the stupid question, so his punishment was to endure the painful answer.
‘We were watching TV, just chilling out, and then this news story came on about domestic violence, right? I thought, Oh great, here we go. Those stories . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know why they have to keep putting those stories on TV. It doesn’t help. It makes it worse!’ Her voice skidded up.
Logan squinted, trying to make sense of what she was saying. Was she saying a story about violence against women inspired it?
‘Those stories always put him in the filthiest of moods. Maybe they made him feel guilty, I don’t know. He’d say, “Oh, it’s always the man’s fault, isn’t it? Never the chick’s fault! Always his fault.”’ She put on a deep, jock-like voice to imitate the boyfriend. Logan could almost see the guy. He knew the type.
‘So anyway, I changed the channel as fast as I could, I was like, “Oh, I want to watch Survivor!” and he didn’t say anything, and then I could feel it, he was just waiting for me to do something wrong, and the minutes went by, and I started to relax, and I thought, Oh it’s fine, and then, like an idiot, like a fool, I asked if he’d paid the car registration.’ She shook her head at her own stupidity. ‘I wasn’t trying to make a point. I honestly wasn’t.’ She looked up at Logan through her sandy eyelashes as if she were trying to convince him of her innocence. ‘I just said, “Did you remember to pay it?”’